Indonesia

Indonesia’s second presidential debate might be a source of amusement for many Indonesian voters, thanks to the colourful exchange between the incumbent Joko Widodo (Jokowi) and the contender Prabowo Subianto. Analyses, fact-checks, and memes referring to and criticising the candidates’ debating

Indonesia, for a country of 260 million people covering a vast archipelago, is often remarked to have a small global profile. This wasn’t always the case. In the early years after gaining independence, for example, Indonesia’s Sukarno was a leader of the non-aligned movement during the Cold War

With the slick presenters, questions pulled out of a fishbowl, and baritone voice-overs, the casual viewer might have thought this was a game show rather than a political battle to lead a nation of more than 260 million people.
It is true that the content can be lightweight and the format is

The Philippine government’s premature declaration that Indonesians were the perpetrators of the Jolo cathedral bombing has set back the prospects for regional cooperation on terrorism and reinforced a perception among Indonesian counterparts of the Philippines as an unreliable and unprofessional

It is almost half-a-century since economist James Tobin proposed a small transaction tax to stabilise volatile global capital flows.
Tobin’s proposal followed the breakdown of the Bretton-Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971. A tiny once-off transaction tax wouldn’t have much effect on

After Jim Yong Kim resigned last month, President Donald Trump indicated he intends to nominate senior US Treasury official David Malpass to lead the World Bank. Under an unofficial agreement, the World Bank President always comes from the United States. Although the multilateral development

In a bid to combat the scourge of misinformation, the popular instant messaging app WhatsApp is now placing a ceiling on the number of recipients to whom users can forward messages.
The technology company announced this new measure at an event in Jakarta, where misinformation has become a

President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo’s decision to release Abu Bakar Ba’asyir is misguided, legally questionable, and politically inept.
It sends the message that if one defies the state long enough, it will eventually capitulate. It emboldens those who see democracy as incompatible with Islam

During the November APEC Summit, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the US will work with Australia and Papua New Guinea to develop the Lombrum naval base on Manus Island.
Analysts have debated whether the plan is part of a pushback against Chinese encroachment in the Pacific and how

When Tony Abbott became prime minister, he immediately went about implementing his policy of “turning back the boats”. This was in the face of warnings that the practice would not only cause a major diplomatic rift between Australia and Indonesia but the very real possibility of a

Observers of Indonesian politics would be forgiven for predicting that Indonesia’s presidential election campaign would be highly divisive, based on the Gerindra opposition’s highly effective exploitation of religious and ethnic schisms to defeat incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) in the

Indonesia is moving into election mode. There will be sweeping general elections in Indonesia in April next year for the presidency, the national parliament, provincial parliaments, and at the regional level across the nation. Australians might go to the polls around the same time, but there will be

Between Prabowo Subianto’s promise to “Make Indonesia Great Again” and Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s warning that “winter is coming”, all eyes in Indonesia are transfixed on the upcoming presidential election.
Yet beyond the campaign trail, Jokowi’s pandering to the Indonesian armed

Indonesia just can’t catch a break.
Following earthquakes in Lombok in August, and a twin earthquake and tsunami in Palu in Central Sulawesi in October killing thousands, the country is once again reeling after Lion Air flight JT610 crashed into the Java Sea on 29 October. The plane was carrying

This is the second of two articles examining the politics behind Indonesia’s revised anti-terror law in the wake of the May family suicide bombings. The first article can be found here.
The counter-terrorism landscape in Southeast Asia has fundamentally changed over the 15 years since Indonesia

This is the first of two articles examining the politics behind Indonesia’s revised anti-terror law in the wake of the May family suicide bombings. The second article is available here.
On 25 May 2018, less than two weeks after a series of suicide bombings and armed attacks on churches and

When international and local media started to feature stories about the heroes of Palu after the Central Sulawesi city was hit by 7.5 magnitude earthquake and a three metre tsunami on 28 September, my thoughts went to two women. Nerlian “Lian” Gogali and Nurlaela “Ella”

Yet another tsunami in Indonesia. The earthquake and resulting wave of destruction in Palu, Central Sulawesi, is the second major natural disaster to strike the country this year.
It is not yet two months since more than 500 people died in the August earthquake in Lombok near Bali.

When an ethnic Chinese woman in Medan named Meliana was sentenced on 21 August* to 18 months on blasphemy charges for complaining about the volume of the call to prayer (azan) in the mosque next door, outrage erupted across Indonesia.
More than 50,000 people joined an online petition to free

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is visiting Indonesia this week on his first international trip as Australia’s leader. The two governments will announce a new trade deal and Australia is keen to show this as a deepening of ties between the two nations.
But in his meetings with Indonesian President

Development lesson
Australia can probably thank China’s amorphous Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for helping push over the line the bilateral trade agreement that Prime Minister Scott Morrison will claim as his first diplomatic triumph on Friday.
The key breakthrough in the agreement is set to

The confirmation by President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo’s of conservative Islamic cleric Ma’ruf Amin as running mate for the April 2019 presidential contest evoked disappointment among constituencies in Indonesia committed to democracy and pluralism.
Interpreted as a forced compromise, a Jokowi-Ma

While some may argue that sport and politics should never mix, many governments have perfected the art of the sport–politics cocktail. It has a name: sports diplomacy.
Countries such as Australia even have a “Sports Diplomacy Strategy” that explains how this heady concoction is meant

Last month, Amnesty International held a major press conference for the release of its first research report on Indonesia since opening a dedicated office in Jakarta.
Representatives of all major local and international media outlets, including newswires, Al Jazeera, the ABC, and The Australian,

It didn’t even make the news in Australia, but two weeks ago India announced it will now allow Indonesian tourists to visit without having to apply or pay for a visa.
This development allows Indonesian nationals to choose India, in addition to all the ASEAN nations, as a holiday destination

Regional elections took place across Indonesia on 27 June, when local voters went to the polls to elect governors, regents, and mayors. The results offer a fascinating insight into the current political landscape, albeit one that analysts need to approach with caution.
It is always

Indonesia has successfully won its bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council 2019–20, but what is the country likely to achieve?
There are, of course, significant constraints to what a non-permanent member of the Security Council can do within the UN

Last month, Indonesia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community was buoyed by a decision to remove the phrase “same-sex” from the article on fornication in the proposed Criminal Code (KUHP) bill, amid a raft of contentious legal changes that have sparked much debate

What are we to make of the relationship between religion and politics in Indonesia? Is Indonesia becoming more intolerant, or is intolerance becoming a more politically mainstream tactic?
Following the mass rallies against then Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama in late 2016, and

Marsha Harini is an Indonesian student who has lived in China for the past seven years. She graduated from one of the international schools in Shanghai, spent a year learning Mandarin at a university in Nanjing, and is currently completing the third year of a bachelor’s degree at Wuhan

Australia is an undisputed world leader in tobacco control. From massive wins with plain packaging to widely enforced bans on smoking in public places, it is easy to see why. Australia is successfully creating a generational shift in tobacco use, with its youngest generation growing up in a

The shocking family suicide attacks in Surabaya this month somewhat overshadowed another disturbing event in Indonesia that took place only a few days before. A deadly riot in a police jail south of Jakarta brimming with terrorism suspects resulted in the brutal execution of

Nearly two-thirds of Indonesian males smoke. This is said to be the highest rate in the world, and includes the notorious case of the two-year-old with a forty-a-day habit.
The government has enacted various anti-smoking measures, but the powerful tobacco lobby makes this effort

This month, Indonesia commemorates 20 years since the fall of strongman Suharto and two decades of the Reformasi era. Today, the strife of 1998 serves as inspiration for the country’s burgeoning contemporary arts.
Suharto’s New Order period was marked by mass-centralisation of powers in

It was an astonishing sight. Nine women dressed in batik sarongs and wearing the traditional, conical hats of Indonesian farmers sat on the edge of the road in front of the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, their feet encased in wooden boxes filled with cement.
Kendeng farmers protest, March 2017 (

Indonesia has again exploded in a paroxysm of terrorist violence, but with a new twist: family suicide bombers. This may be the first time in the world that parents took their children on a family outing to blow themselves up.
The three families included the six killed in the bombings of

In social media-loving Indonesia, Facebook is big business. As one of the biggest markets for the platform, it’s little surprise that Indonesia was the third most affected country in the Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal.
Facebook estimates that 748 Indonesian accounts hosted a personality

China, China, China.
All the talk is of increasing Chinese influence in our region. But this is to wilfully ignore the elephant in the room.
Contrary to most commentary, the biggest destabilising player in Melanesia over the past five years has not been China, but Indonesia. Through

Last year’s “hostage stand-off” in Indonesian Papua had hardly ended before more armed clashes began. Most violence in Papua is assumed to be an issue of indigenous people threatened by the state. But this assumption is anecdotal.
Despite the wealth Indonesia earns through Papua’s

Given the number of green helmets and jackets marking out ride-hailing app drivers amid Jakarta’s notorious traffic, it’s easy to think the digital start-ups have conquered the market once and for all. But behind the cacophony of cheap motorcycle travel, the familiar chugging of Bajaj three

“We believe this is the worst oil spill to catch fire since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster,” said Fathur Roziqin Fen, Director of WALHI East Kalimantan. WALHI is Indonesia’s largest environmental organisation and is closely monitoring the consequences of last week’s large oil spill

“Indonesia’s fishing industry was broken for many years,” says Amhar, who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name. “Then Susi came along and she fought for us.”
Amhar is a fisherman with a small boat he runs out of Panah Hijau, a fishing community in Medan, North Sumatra

The young in Indonesia are finding a voice. The Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), formed to win over a generation of millennial voters, is a response to what is seen as an oligarchy – political parties led by “old” people, particularly figures related to the New Order regime of

John Carlson says Australia approached maritime boundary negotiations with Indonesia in 1972 by arguing the Timor Trough was the meeting point of two geologically distinct continental shelves at a subduction zone. But the trough does not constitute two separate shelves any more than a rumpled carpet

After the Bali bombings of 2002, security forces within the Government of Indonesia, like their Western counterparts, worked towards incorporating “ideological” or “soft” approaches into counterterrorism portfolios. This approach later became commonly known as Countering Violent

Indonesia is set to host talks among Indonesian and Afghan Islamic clerics in Bogor, south of Jakarta, at the end of March. This dialogue, part of Indonesia’s bid to mediate the peace process in the long-standing Afghan conflict, will involve the Indonesian Ulema Council and Afghanistan

At the weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will meet with President of Indonesia Joko Widodo (Jokowi) on the margins of the Australia-ASEAN Special Summit. Although Turnbull seems to have built the positive personal relationship with Jokowi that eluded Tony Abbott, managing the bilateral

A group of ten Muslim students gathered in the shady courtyard of central Jakarta’s Roman Catholic Cathedral are reluctant to pass through its neo-Gothic doorways.
Some argue that entering the cathedral would contravene their devotion to Islam and equate to an abandonment of faith.

Although the recent Lowy Institute report by Andrew Rosser, “Beyond Access: Making Indonesia’s Education System Work”, reveals an Indonesian education system buckling under its own deficiencies, it can be read largely optimistically. The weaknesses Rosser outlines are all redeemable

In her article “How Australia crossed a line in the Timor Sea”, Kim McGrath claims that Australia had evidence supporting Indonesia’s claim in maritime boundary negotiations – but buried it.
This serious charge is not substantiated by the 1970 report from then Bureau of